Weekly Billing Summary

Your weekly billing summary includes all your charges from the past week. It is broken down into three sections: Fixed-Price Milestones, Timesheets (weekly bills) for hourly contracts, and all Other Payments (like bonuses).

Fixed-Price Milestones

Fixed-Price contracts can be broken into smaller pieces for easier billing and escrow protection. You’ll work with your freelancer to describe each of these pieces so that it is clear what the freelancer must deliver to earn payment for that milestone. You then fund the current milestone into escrow so that the freelancer knows their payment is secure and ready to be released when the work is done. You can create as many milestones as you need, either ahead of time or after you release the previous payment.

The freelancer can submit a milestone through Upwork for you to approve, or you can release the milestones on the contract without waiting for them to file the request—whatever works best for you. If you don’t approve the work, be sure to reject the milestone request and ask them to make the necessary fixes.

Warning: If you don't respond to a submitted milestone, the funds will be released automatically after 2 weeks.

Timesheets

Timesheets for hourly contracts are billed automatically each Monday at 12 noon UTC (see the weekly billing cycle). This means your billing method on file will be charged each Monday for the previous week’s work. Automatic billing includes the hours in your freelancers’ Work Diaries as well any recurring set weekly payments you added to the contract.

If you have a problem with this past week’s Timesheet or Work Diary, you may file a dispute from the time you are billed on Monday until Friday at 23:59 UTC.

To view a summary of your hourly billing, go to Reports > Timesheet. For a particular contract’s details or a dispute link, go to the contract's workroom > Time & Payments.

Other Payments

If you make a payment to a freelancer above and beyond their milestones or timesheets, it will appear in this section. These may be referred to elsewhere as bonuses or manual payments. They could represent almost anything: a sales commission, a milestone on an hourly contract, an expense reimbursement, payment for hours not recorded on the Timesheet, etc. None of these are billed automatically—you must fill out the Give Bonus form manually for each transaction.

To add a bonus to a contract, go to the contract's workroom Payments tab and click the Give Bonus button at the top.